The techniques available to graphic artists and video/film editors for the overlay of text on images are limited. The inevitable problem encountered by the designer when overlaying a photograph with text is that of the text colour merging into similarly coloured regions in the background image, rendering the text unreadable.
This problem has been crudely solved by text outlining, text shadow-casting, under-text blocking or text-surround glow etc. These methods all more or less hide the image and make strong graphic impressions that compromise aesthetic intention of the designer. For example, in the overlay of subtitles on video and film it is readily apparent that particular damage is caused to the image content.
The present invention seeks to solve the text readability problems described above in a way that is less destructive to the image than known solutions.